‘All Things Come To Those Who Wait’ is an older version of the more common proverb ‘Good Things Come To Those Who Wait’.
When the poor fellow waiting in the picture above was published, copyright in printed matter in the UK expired at the same time the author did. By 1842 copyright outlived the author by 7 years. By 1911 it became 50 years post mortem. Now copyright lasts for 70 years after the author’s demise. Admittedly rather a long wait.
At least our very patient friend above has time on his side. And at least he can console himself with the fact that – if he can wait long enough – everything will enter the public domain eventually 1.
If, like us, you probably won’t be able to wait that long, you can catch a glimpse of a bright, free, copyright-unencumbered world at The Public Domain Review. If you like what you see then you can sign up for free articles and collections to your inbox, and follow it on Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest.
If you can think of somewhere nice to put it, the graphic is on Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike license.
- With the strange and wonderful exception of Peter Pan, that incorrigible rascal who has fallen out of copyright, but nevertheless keeps compelling everyone – except the Disney Corporation – to give to Great Ormond Street Hospital for children. ↩
Dr. Jonathan Gray is Lecturer in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, where he is currently writing a book on data worlds. He is also Cofounder of the Public Data Lab; and Research Associate at the Digital Methods Initiative (University of Amsterdam) and the médialab (Sciences Po, Paris). More about his work can be found at jonathangray.org and he tweets at @jwyg.
